The puzzle kit disclosed herein, in general, relates to number puzzles. More particularly, the number puzzle kit disclosed herein relates to selecting numbers to solve a puzzle on a board.
Puzzles, as a test of skill and intelligence, have been in existence for centuries. Puzzles are an enduring form of entertainment and come in a wide variety of categories. Puzzles may come in the form of jigsaw puzzles, picture puzzles, number puzzles, word puzzles, logic puzzles and more. Despite these types of puzzles being in existence in many different cultures and time periods, innovation in puzzle creation has continued.
Sudoku is a logic-based number puzzle game that started to become popular around 1986. The objective of Sudoku is to fill a 9×9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 sub-grids that compose the grid contains all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.
Number puzzles first became popular in the late 19th century, when French puzzle setters began experimenting with removing numbers from magic squares. Le Siécle, a Paris daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 sub-squares on Nov. 19, 1892. It was not a Sudoku because it contained double-digit numbers and required arithmetic rather than logic to solve, but it shared key characteristics: each row, column and sub-square added up to the same number.
Completed Sudoku games are always a type of Latin square with an additional constraint on the contents of individual regions. For example, the same single integer may not appear twice in the same row, column, or any of the nine 3×3 subregions of the 9×9 playing board. In combinatorics and in experimental design, a Latin square is an n×n array filled with n different symbols, each occurring exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,677,564 to Kriger discloses a Sudoku-Type Puzzle Board Game and Method of Play. A game apparatus is provided for one or more players having a first game member that includes a puzzle or a game area having indicia forming a grid having sub-grids including a plurality of cells. Each cell is assigned indicia in a solution pattern of the puzzle such that a distinct indicium appears once in each row, column, and sub-grid. The first game member displays the solution indicia for some of the cells and the remaining cells are divided into a number of sub-cells bearing the possible solution indicia for the corresponding cell such that each sub-cell includes a distinct indicium. A player speculates which sub-cell bears the correct solution indicia for the respective cell. The apparatus further includes at least one game piece adapted to randomly display an indicium when manipulated, the indicia modifying a game parameter such as a player's score or number of possible speculations the player can make in one turn.
Puzzle games where a board having a grid for the placement of tiles have achieved great popularity. Scrabble® is an example of a tile placement word tile game. U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,886, Chalfin discloses a word forming board game with colored transparent tiles. A board game wherein the playing board has color-coded sides and color chips having each side color-coded are placed by opposing players on the playing board adjacent to other color chips and the color-coded sides of the board so that the colors of each adjacent chip match one another and so that the color of each chip which is adjacent to a color-coded side of the board also matches the color-coded side.
As evidenced by the success of Sudoku and the proliferation of logic-based number puzzles, demand for new types of puzzles for new generations to call their own, a need exists for genuinely new types of number puzzles.